How many vowel phonemes are there in English pronunciation?

[TaiwanPofLee]

How many vowel phonemes you think are there now in standard (RP or General American ) English pronunciation?

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Plenty!

 

[TaiwanPofLee]

My question especially concerns a changing trend in vowel phonemes of American English.
Please see the Pronunciation Symbols used by the Merriam-Webster English dictionary.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/pronsymbols.html

 

[Tdol]

Dictionaries often use their own systems.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

My question especially concerns a changing trend in vowel phonemes of American English.
Please see the Pronunciation Symbols used by the Merriam-Webster English dictionary.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/pronsymbols.html

Hi, Taiwan! Thanks for the link. I looked at it. What are you wondering? What trend do you mean? How important is the number?

 

[TaiwanPofLee]

Hi, Taiwan! Thanks for the link. I looked at it. What are you wondering? What trend do you mean? How important is the number?

Hi, Charlie!

The Americans are merging, or have merged, the pronunciations of letters a as in abut, u as in abut and e as in kitten into one same phoneme. So Obama said to Elizabeth that her mother was late for the bus.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Hi, Charlie!

The Americans are merging, or have merged, the pronunciations of letters a as in abut, u as in abut and e as in kitten into one same phoneme. So Obama said to Elizabeth that her mother was late for the bus.

Oh!

Not kitten. That's a schwa before the n. What we say is more like kitt'n,* not at all like kittuhn. The other three, yes. It's an uh sound in all of them.

That's not new. I'm 63, and I can't remember it ever being any other way. (And I should know! I'm an Uh-merican!)

* Actually, we tend to swallow the T sound somewhat when it's in the middle of a word, so kitten is almost ki'n, with a sort of catch or hiccup where the T should be. In many words, we pronounce a T like a D. For instance, in American English, metal and medal are pronounced the same, and city rhymes with giddy.

Though the British can be as sloppy with English as anyone (after all, they invented it!), they tend to be much more precise with their T's. Their bottles are never boddles!

 

[MikeNewYork]

British "bottles" can be Bah uls. Be careful with generalizations.

 

[Raymott]

I'd write it as /bɒʔəlz/ or /bɔʔəlz/. That is, forgetting about the glottal stop, the 'o' is not an /ah/ from my experience; but a proper English 'o' (as in 'stop') or a non-rhotic 'or'.

For me, it's Americans who use /ah/ for 'o', as in 'Stahp, or ah'll shoot!'. (OK, I got that from movies; I don't know if your authorities still give warnings). ;-)

 

[Roman55]

You might get a warning if you're white.

Getting back to the point, even the laziest Estuary English speaker still pronounces the 'o' in /bɒʔəlz/.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

British "bottles" can be Bah uls. Be careful with generalizations.

Yup. Thanks for clarifying. I've learned that we talk in generalizations here unless we specifically say we're talking about a particular place, case, or group of people. (And I'm trying to remember to state clearly that I speak American English whenever it might make a difference.)

I've heard that English pronunciation of bottle you're describing too. It's sort of like the mid-Connecticut swallowed T. Standard British English, which is what I was talking about, hits the T hard: bottle. So do old-money Americans - as discussed in detail in the movie Six Degrees of Separation.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

For me, it's Americans who use /ah/ for 'o', as in 'Stahp, or ah'll shoot!'.

Absolutely. I was just talking about the T. I wasn't getting into how the O in bottle is pronounced.

Stahp is standard American. Although I often pronounce I the way you have it, ah, that's because I learned to talk in the U.S. midwest. For instance, I say "Ah'm sorry" but "I don't know." You're right, many Americans say "Ah don't know." And many American's say "I'm sorry."

So I lean toward thinking that the long I is "standard." Ah'm not sure, though!

 

[TaiwanPofLee]

British colonies in America rebelled, separated, developed, and changed the English language.
So Obama said to Elizabeth that her aunt was robbed in the center of the new borough.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

British colonies in America rebelled, separated, developed, and changed the English language.
So Obama said to Elizabeth that her aunt was robbed in the center of the new borough.

?

Hm. Yes to O-bah-ma and rahbbed, no to the rest. (Many Americans do say ahnt. It's not wrong, but it's not the usual. Most Americans say it like ant.)

You're on the right track, though!

 

[TaiwanPofLee]

As far as I have seen, contemporary general American English has been merging four vowel sounds into schwa, namely: u as in bus, i(r) as in bird, e(r) as in paper, and a as in abut; schwa can be a stressed or unstressed vowel. Thus, the number of English vowel phonemes has been decreasing in the USA.
See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bus

 

[MikeNewYork]

I disagree. The "u" is bus is a normal short u. The "i" in bird is not a schwa. I don't see the "e" in paper as a schwa; it is pronounced the same as the "e" in per. You could call the "a" in abut a schwa, but I wouldn't.